


Clone!Carson: five people he re-evaluated.

by ariadne83



Category: Stargate Atlantis
Genre: Character Study, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-11-13
Updated: 2009-11-13
Packaged: 2017-10-02 14:58:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,548
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7643
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ariadne83/pseuds/ariadne83
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Carson during his rehabilitation.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Clone!Carson: five people he re-evaluated.

**Author's Note:**

> Beta by [kimberlyfdr](http://kimberlyfdr.livejournal.com).  
> Vague spoilers for seasons four and five.  
> Dark themes in section five.

**1) Sam Carter.**

To be perfectly honest, he hadn't thought about her at all before. He'd heard about her plenty from Rodney - as competition, as the object of his delusional fantasies - and read about all the medical peculiarities her team had been inflicted with over the years. But developing the retrovirus to deliver the ATA gene, and then the anti-Wraith retrovirus, had kept his mind well occupied, thank you. Now that he was on Earth, he had nothing but time; in between the rigorous physical and psychological evaluations, that was. They'd forbidden him any access to their labs or networks, until they were confident Michael hadn't implanted some sort of hidden command in his brain. So he had lots of free time, but no family or friends to spend it with and no access to the outside world. Carter had a least smiled at him apologetically when she'd explained the constraints and she was good enough to grab Daniel Jackson by the arm and drag him out of Carson's room when the man tried to grill him about Atlantis ("For his own good, of course. To see if his memory matches the mission reports").

Carson's fingers itched whenever the emergency klaxon sounded, and he missed his medical staff something fierce. He couldn't help wondering how much worse it was for Colonel Carter, losing her command for the terrible crime of being too efficient. He resolved to buy her a bottle of scotch, just as soon as they let him out and about.

**2) Katie Brown.**

He smiled at her politely whenever he saw her in the corridors at Stargate Command, but she always frowned and ducked away. It was ages before he got any inkling why; the gossip was months and months old by the time he got back to the Milky Way. After that, he made sure he smiled broadly at her, or nodded his head. She'd been there through the worst of it, thick as thieves with his old friends when he - when the other Carson - had been blown to smithereens. Now she was here, cut off from all the wonders of the city. It was by her own choice, certainly, but even so she looked... lost. He knew the feeling.

**3) Laura Cadman.**

He'd been back on Earth for two months when she invited him out for a late lunch. It was a relief, actually - the chance to spend time out of the Mountain with someone familiar. Even better, she hadn't been there for that missing year; didn't have memories of him that he'd never experienced for himself. It'd been a little over two years since he'd seen her last, and it was refreshing that Laura could say the same.

They got to O'Malley's just after two. Laura volunteered to pay, which was just as well. Carson didn't even know yet whether they'd try to make him un-dead or just give him a new identity, so he didn't have access to any funds.

"So, Dolly," Laura said, taking a seat. "How's things?"

"Oh, fine," Carson said lightly. "For a bird in a gilded cage."

She smirked. "More like copper."

"The concrete walls have their charm."

"Enough shop talk. Let's eat." She studied the menu intently, as if she hadn't been here at least fifty times before, and ordered for them both when the waitress finally came over with glasses of water.

Carson listened to the crisp snap of her voice and couldn't help comparing: the way things had gotten quiet and strained between them when they thought Major Lorne was dead, and the screaming fight they'd had after that turned out not to be the case after all. Carson had thought he was giving her space, only to find out third-hand that her name was on the Daedalus' passenger manifest. He could recall how sharply it had hurt, but it was distant now; unimportant. He'd been glad, when Michael captured him, to have no-one left to lose.

When she finished up, Laura caught him staring. He flashed her a tight smile and lifted his glass, clinking it against hers.

"Here's to momentary freedom."

She shook her head. "You need a real drink, to make a toast."

She took a sip of her water and watched him carefully, perhaps wondering - like everyone else - how much he really remembered. Carson just made small talk about how nice it was to have fresh cheese, and all the other ridiculous things they'd taken for granted until they went to Pegasus. She supplied him with advice about where to get the best takeout, and their conversation fell into a steady rhythm; all the comfortable inanities no one had bothered to talk to him about in a very long time.

Unsurprisingly, since the kitchen was almost closed when they arrived, the food was lackluster, but the company made up for it. An hour became two, and Laura had to step outside to reassure the proper authorities that he was still in her custody. Then she ordered shots and raised an eyebrow at him, as if daring him to say no. Another hour slipped by in a haze of beer and whiskey. Laura started telling heavily-edited stories about the trouble her new gate team got up to, and the bar manager confiscated her keys.

The sun was setting when they stumbled outside and Laura called for a ride. When she snapped her cell closed and turned back to face him, there was a spark in her eyes now that he was almost certain hadn't been there when they'd... when she was with the other him. It seemed only natural to go home with her, to press up against her in the back seat of the cab, slide his hands into her hair and kiss her, hard, the way he'd never dared to before. He slammed her front door and pushed her up against it, biting and scratching and teasing; unleashing all his loneliness and frustration. She took it all and gave it right back, shoving him down to the floor just inside the doorway and riding him hard.

Later, after they'd showered and crawled into bed, he whispered things into her hair that he hadn't said out loud since they took him out of stasis; starting with, "They weren't even looking for me" and trailing off somewhere around "None of them know me; or I don't know them anymore." She just pressed her face into his neck and held him close. They never had been ones for false reassurances.

The next day, he had carpet burn on his ass and she was moving slowly, lifting her knees carefully in a way that suggested maybe the floor wasn't padded enough. She smiled at him wickedly - it was definitely worth it - and they caught a cab back to the bar to pick up her Jeep.

He didn't see her for a week after that, and it was another three before they ended up in bed again. After that, it became a semi-regular occurrence, like Karaoke Thursdays. In the end, they fucked for nigh-on three months, and then his transfer back to Pegasus was approved. She didn't so much as blink when he told her; neither of them commented on the fact that he was the one leaving this time.

**4) Rodney McKay.**

They were friends before, two years saving each other's backsides would do that, but not the kind of friends who wrote each other daily missives on the minutiae of work and family, or up-to-the-minute progress on how Rodney was (not) working up to asking out Jennifer Keller. Now that he finally had network access, Carson quickly learned to make sure he emptied his inbox entirely the day before the databurst was due in; the mail server the SGC used just wasn't robust enough to withstand a suddenly-verbose Rodney McKay. In the beginning, he read them all - boredom and procrastinating from PT could lead a man to drastic measures - but after the seventh iteration of how Zelenka was "wrong, wrong, and did I mention wrong?" he started preemptively deleting the ones with exclamation marks in the subject line.

He'd been nearly unbearable when Carson mentioned the possibility of returning to Pegasus. Rodney sent through a frighteningly detailed (and yet obviously biased) spreadsheet consisting of a cost/benefit analysis of the various attractions and activities the galaxy had to offer. Fishing was number seventeen.

**5) Carson Beckett.**

The old reports read like eulogies and he struggled to find anything of himself in them. Would this other man have survived almost two years as a prisoner? Would he have been strong enough to shoot Michael, to resist his coercion, and save the lives of thousands? He'd tried to hang himself four times, but his fingers wouldn't close the noose. Would the other him have seen it through, or found another way?

On Atlantis, they looked at him and saw the man he had never become, and it was almost unbearable. It was better than being treated like an inferior copy, perhaps, but how he was supposed to carry the weight of two separate people's decisions, he hadn't a clue. When he stepped through the gate, onto one world of many ravaged by the Hoffan drug, it was like taking his first deep breath in weeks.


End file.
